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The regressive demands of demand-driven development

Author Info

  • Baird, Sarah
  • McIntosh, Craig
  • Ozler, Berk

Abstract

Despite their explicit focus on reaching the poor, many community driven development (CDD) projects have been found to be only mildly pro-poor in their funding allocations. This paper presents evidence of an explanation that has been overlooked in the CDD literature to date: the requirement that beneficiaries must apply for projects in order to receive support. The authors first examine data on the universe of project applications and funding under Tanzania's flagship CDD program, Tanzania's Social Action Fund, and then use a census of 100 program villages to examine the determinants of both program awareness and program participation at the household level. The data paint a consistent picture at both levels: wealth, access to information, and political capital are important correlates of the ability to navigate the application process successfully. The centrally dictated features of this decentralized program appear to be the most effective mechanisms in directing funds to the poor. The results suggest that unless demand-driven projects can develop ways of soliciting engagement from a broader cross-section of the population, they are unlikely to achieve truly progressive targeting.

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Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 5883.

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Date of creation: 01 Nov 2011
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5883
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Keywords: Rural Poverty Reduction; Housing&Human Habitats; Poverty Monitoring&Analysis; Services&Transfers to Poor; Regional Economic Development;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods
  • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Community-Based Development initiatives: Who in the village hears about them and who doesn’t? And how?
    by Bet Caeyers in The CSAE Blog on 2014-12-29 14:46:01
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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Cited by:

  1. Pan, Lei & Christiaensen, Luc, 2012. "Who is Vouching for the Input Voucher? Decentralized Targeting and Elite Capture in Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 1619-1633.
  2. Jean-Philippe Platteau & Vincent Somville & Zaki Wahhaj, 2013. "Elite Capture Through Information Distortion: A Theoretical Essay," Studies in Economics 1305, School of Economics, University of Kent.
  3. Bet Caeyers, 2014. "Peer effects in development programme awareness of vulnerable groups in rural Tanzania," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-11, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.

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